


better than a song

by ssstrychnine



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - No IT (King), Alternate Universe - Radio, Fluff, M/M, background ben/bev, background stan/mike
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-05-15
Packaged: 2019-05-07 14:06:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14672652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssstrychnine/pseuds/ssstrychnine
Summary: He calls again, because of all of these things. Because the song had reminded him, in a weird way, of being young and confused and half in love with all of his friends. Only dimly aware of the ways people might hate him. He means to say thank you, but for just an instant, he remembers his mother, their dinner, and instead he says:“Punk’s dead, asshole.”“You can’t fucking swear on the radio,” says Richie of Trashmouth’s T-day Tunes, quick as a flash, and Eddie can’t help it, he laughs, this raspy choking awful thing that leaves him breathless and shaking. When he’s almost caught his breath, Richie says, “and anyway, they’re post-punk, sick boy, don't you know anything?”Richie is a radio host on shitty 90s college radio and Eddie is a listener who calls him at weird hours.





	better than a song

**Author's Note:**

> [i made a post about this on tumblr](http://oneangryshot.tumblr.com/post/166799947422) like thirty years ago and finally followed through

Eddie Kaspbrak lives alone. An apartment, cramped and uninspired, with a flimsy sort of quality to it, like it came in pieces in a cardboard box to be put together like a jigsaw puzzle. It’s cozy enough though, and there’s a small sort of victory in it, in having a place of his own. His keys hang off a keychain Bev gave him, a tiny enamel pill box with a red cross painted across the top. It’s empty, a joke, but almost as important to him as the keys are.  
  
When he's with his mother, he feels it more. It's her birthday and they eat dinner together, not at a restaurant but at home, and Eddie is sick, something like a cold, a sore throat and itchy eyes, but he makes the mistake of rubbing his neck and his mother decides it must be meningitis. It ruins dinner and even though something was always going to ruin dinner, Eddie’s still disappointed. He'd brought a fucking cake, this spun sugar and lemon thing because it’s what she _likes,_ but of course she’d known that Mike had made it and of course she’d never touch it anyway.  
  
It starts raining as he's leaving, heavy cold raindrops that hit his windshield like bullets, and it's wild by the time he's home, all jagged lightning and fierce grey wind. He takes NyQuil and Advil and echinacea drops dissolved in water and he curls up small in bed. It's still light outside, even with the storm getting stronger, so he pulls his covers over his head. He falls quickly into an uneasy sleep, dreams of ice and the smell of thick, sweet floral perfume.  
  
He's thrown awake by his cough, harsh and dry and deep, rattling against his ribs. It shakes him into consciousness. Outside, the wind is throwing branches against the windows and the rain is hard ice and Eddie thinks it's kind of funny, like the weather is mimicking his insides, like the branches are his bones and the wind is his cough. His fingers itch for his old inhaler, abandoned at fifteen, the first of his small rebellions. He fumbles for the little pot of Vicks on his bedside table instead, rubs it carefully into his chest, pulling his pajama shirt away from his skin. Probably not meningitis. Probably just a cold. He should take some vitamin C.   
  
It’s a little after eleven, the red light of his clock glowing in the dark. He thinks that maybe he should do an inhalation too, let steam burn the virus out of his throat. He won't go to work tomorrow anyway, mostly because he's sick but also because of everything else. He hopes the kids don’t worry. Some of them are funny about their teachers missing days. Some of them think that if they’re gone for more than an hour they’re never coming back.

He drapes his duvet around his shoulders like a cape, holding it carefully closed at his throat. He pads down the hallway, pauses outside the bathroom, decides against more NyQuil, decides against an inhalation too, ends up in his living room. He tries his TV, but it’s just storm-static, it never works in bad weather, and he’s about to go back to his bedroom when he remembers that the radio exists. His stereo is a mess, really, given to him by Bev, secondhand already, when she moved in with her aunt and had to give up a lot of her stuff. A black stereo stack with a tape deck and a turntable at the top and no CD player. It works alright for him. For his old Smiths cassettes, his old B-52’s cassettes, his old everything.

He kneels down in front of the stereo, flips through the channels. He never really listens to the radio, because most of the hosts annoy him and because he likes music in a casual sort of way, not enough to seek it out. Because Bev says he has the music taste of a fifty year old man and he can’t be bothered finding the channels that suit him. Here, under a storm, he turns the dial, watches the marker travel along the frequencies, counts up the numbers in his head. Static and quick snippets of songs. When he stops, it’s because he recognises the song, quiet hollow guitar, shuffling drums, a song that sounds like an empty room. It’s Trouble, by Cat Stevens, an older song than he’s expecting to hear on the radio, and quieter, and sadder. It’s just started, and it hurts to hear a little bit, so simply sung, _you’re eating my heart away and there’s nothing much left of me_. It tugs at something under his ribs, more than his cold. It itches at his palms, blows clear space in his head. He remembers watching a movie with Ben that had the song in it, a woman dying and a car driving in the rain, a kid with his head out the window and wind in his hair. A kid who was obsessed with death. A kid with a mother who ruled his life. He almost turns it off immediately, but it’s kind of comforting too, to hear something so starkly honest. He lies back on the carpet of his small living room, arms behind his head, blanket tangled under him. He shuts his eyes, listens to the song play. It’s not about him. He left his trouble when he moved out.  
  
When it finishes, there’s a pause in sound. Outside, the storm is still emphatically angry. Eddie opens his eyes, sits up, picks up his blankets and hangs it around his shoulders again, huddling over his crossed legs.  
  
“That was Cat Stevens,” says the host, far too bright for the middle of the night. “Y’know, for a dose of depression on your Tuesday night. Wanna request something less upsetting to play? Gimme a call. I’m Richie and you’re listening to Trashmouth’s T-day Tunes, because alliteration is the only good thing left in this cruel world.”  
  
An obnoxious jingle plays, repeating the phone number over and over again, air horns and a cowbell, and then a new song starts, something Eddie doesn’t recognise. He considers his hands, in his lap, palm up, fingers curled in. He considers the blanket, perilously close to falling from his shoulders. His house feels quiet, still, even with the storm raging and the radio playing. It’s empty. _There’s nothing much left of me_ , thinks Eddie, and he laughs. He gets to his feet, heads to the kitchen where his phone is, drags it to the living room, pulling the cord behind him. It winds around his furniture, dragged tight. Eddie sits back down on the floor, takes the receiver from the cradle, dials the number.    
  
“Oh my god,” is the answer he gets, that same bright voice. “This isn’t a prank call, right?”  
  
“What? No,” says Eddie, instantly confused. “No, it’s just-”  
  
“I can’t believe it, a real live human caller,” says Richie, host of Trashmouth’s T-day Tunes. “I’m gonna put you on hold for a sec, until the song’s over.”  
  
“I-.” Eddie is plunged back into silence. Or... well, the storm is still raging and the song is still playing and Eddie still doesn’t know what it is, but there’s muffled quiet on the other end of the phone. He should definitely hang up. He winds the spiral cord around his finger and he should _definitely_ hang up. He tugs his socks carefully straight, pulls the collar of his pajamas up and over his nose so he can check that the smell of Vicks is still there. It’s so strong he chokes, and he’s coughing when Richie answers the phone again.  
  
“You’re on, uh-” Eddie’s coughing must startle him into silence, because he stops. “You okay?”  
  
“Fine,” Eddie rasps, clearly not fine. He coughs again, presses his hand to his chest. This is what he gets for not carrying water with him wherever he goes. Even if it is just to sit on the floor in the middle of the night and call radio stations. “ _Fine_ ,” he says again, pushing through it.  
  
“Right,” says Richie. “I... okay, I’ve totally lost what I was going to say, so thanks for that. How’re you doing on this balmy evening? Because it sounds like you’ve just coughed up a lung. Do I need to call an ambulance?”  
  
“I’m fine,” says Eddie, once more, “just sick.” He has absolutely no idea what to say, why he called, and the silences in their conversation seem far longer than they are.  
  
“Okay, sick boy, what can I do for you tonight?”  
  
“I... honestly, I don’t know, I don’t know why I called. Can you just like... play something to make me feel less awful?” _Less lonely_ , he thinks. _Less disgustingly sick and lonely and awful_.  
  
“Sure I can. Anything else you want? I’ll send you... well, I can send you an Aqua poster or a Placebo poster, they only ever really give me posters, whaddaya think?”  
  
“I don’t know who either of them are,” says Eddie, truthfully.  
  
“Placebo have a very pretty lead singer, did a cute cover of Bigmouth Strikes Again, and Aqua are responsible for Barbie Girl, obviously an instant classic.”  
  
“I think I’m alright for posters, actually,” says Eddie, following the lines of his ceiling with his eyes. “Thanks though.”  
  
“Anything for the first caller I’ve had in literally... a month, maybe? Isn't that sad? No one appreciates genius these days. I’ll play you something to cure you, alright sick boy?”  
  
“Alright,” he says. “Thanks.”  
  
The line goes dead. Eddie hangs up, lies back down flat on the floor, shuts his eyes again. He is the most awkward human in the history of the world and he is never going to get over it.  
  
“This is for my favourite caller of the night,” says Richie, apparently unconcerned. “This is for the sick boy.”  
  
As soon as he realises what song is playing, Eddie groans, covers his face with his hands. _As I was lying in a hospital bed, a rock n roll nurse went into my head_. New York Dolls had been a group he and Bev listened to for awhile, because they both liked their makeup, their tight pants, their tall shoes. Bev’s aunt had been a big fan, a fan of a lot of weird old music, and Eddie would visit their apartment after school and he and Bev would trawl through her vinyl collection and try to replicate some of the makeup and outfits on the covers. Stark cheeks and bold lips and feather boas, laughing and sneering at each other in the mirror. Eddie was only ever a casual fan of the music, but the stuff that came out of it, exploring the way he looked, the way he felt about himself, glam-punk and new wave, away from his mother and the rigid lines she kept, well that stuck. Glitter glue and nostalgia. Still. It’s entirely the wrong choice of song. Still. He does make an attempt at air drums, from his place on the floor. Still. He thinks he should probably thank him.  
  
So he calls again, because of all of these things. Because the song had reminded him, in a weird way, of being young and confused and half in love with all of his friends. Only dimly aware of the ways people might hate him. He means to say thank you, but for just an instant, he remembers his mother, their dinner, the way her lip had curled when he showed her the cake box, and instead he says:  
  
“Punk’s dead, asshole.”  
  
“You can’t fucking swear on the radio,” says Richie of Trashmouth’s T-day Tunes, quick as a flash, and Eddie can’t help it, he laughs, this raspy choking awful thing that leaves him breathless and shaking. When he’s almost caught his breath, Richie says, “and anyway, they’re post-punk, sick boy, don't you know anything?”  
  
“Are you always this rude to your callers?”  
  
“Only the cute ones.”  
  
“You don't even-”  
  
“Oh don't try deny you're cute.” He sounds like he's smiling, and Eddie kind of loves it. It's one of his favourite things in the world, making people smile. It's part of the reason he works with kids.  
  
“Whatever,” says Eddie, also smiling like he'll never stop. “That made me feel so much worse.”  
  
“I live to please,” says Richie. “Feel better, okay sick boy?”  
  
“Maybe, goodnight.”  
  
“Call again soon!”  
  
Eddie goes back to bed, curls up small. Weird how a stupid song can make you feel better. Weird how some guy on the radio, vivid and fast, can make you feel better. Trashmouth's T-Day Tunes. Maybe that means he'll be on again Thursday. Eddie runs his palm over the cool smoothness of his sheet then tucks his hand under his pillow. He has a whole cake to eat tomorrow. Maybe he'll invite Ben and Bev over and they can share it, lemon and spun sugar. Lemons are curative, it can't possibly make him sicker. Richie's voice had been nice. A little rough at the edges, but nice. He pulls his knees to his chest, loops his free arm around one calf, and falls asleep. 

**Author's Note:**

> i know i know, two wips right. a nightmare. oh well, this is gonna be a small thing. 
> 
> songs referenced:
> 
> [trouble - cat stevens](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1tRB7-aBr8)  
> [pills - the new york dolls](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J_K8tv0Jo8)  
> [barbie girl - aqua](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyhrYis509A)  
> [bigmouth strikes again - placebo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4VgEu1jkEU)  
> [harold and maude is the movie eddie remembers and the scene is here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEbSkybMuqs) it's kinda a weird movie, about this kid who is obsessed w death, spends a lot of time doing like mock suicides etc, falls in love w an old lady who loves life.  
> title comes from another [ that's also in harold and maude because that movie like 99% cat stevens it's weird but pretty wholesome.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDUuBfpbwOs)
> 
> thank you for reading! please lemme know what you think ♡♡[say hello if you like!](http://oneangryshot.tumblr.com/me)


End file.
